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Introduction to Linux - A Hands on Guide

This guide was created as an overview of the Linux Operating System, geared toward new users as an exploration tour and getting started guide, with exercises at the end of each chapter.
For more advanced trainees it can be a desktop reference, and a collection of the base knowledge needed to proceed with system and network administration. This book contains many real life examples derived from the author's experience as a Linux system and network administrator, trainer and consultant. They hope these examples will help you to get a better understanding of the Linux system and that you feel encouraged to try out things on your own.

My first contact with Linux happened in 2000. If my memory serves me right, I used Conectiva Linux, a localized Brazilian distro. My work at this company not only offered my first contact with Linux, but also with programming - as I was charged to build the company's new web site and started meddling with C - which, unfortunately, never went much beyond a "Hello world!" output - shame on me!
When this job ended, I was soon called into another one where I would maintain the email server of another company due this first opportunity. But I was taking engineering school and it became increasingly difficult to accommodate the part time job and study demands and I had to quit that job. My next contact with Linux took place a few years later, in 2005, where I found myself having a lot of free time. I had at my complete disposal a computer and a shared internet connection. I partitioned the disk and installed Kurumin, another localized Brazilian distro. Though it was nicely build and it was very much user driven, I found myself quite often asking the same "how to do (...) slighty different from the scripted way?", until a friend of mine suddenly asked: "Why don't you try Slackware?", to which I promptly replied "Why not indeed? Can you help installing and taking the firsts steps on it"? So I brought my desktop to his place and the fun started. Lots of trial-and-errors, lots of kernel recompiling, lots of tweaking, searching for dependencies, eventual reinstalls, etc.

Over the years, I tried some other distros (Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, openSUSE, CentOS), but I always drift back to Slackware for one reason or another - even if it's plain stubbornness! Also, I don't mean to say these other distros are not good. On the contrary! I praise Ubuntu for the excellent work their are doing in bringing more people to the Linux community. Debian is also a great rock-solid distro. Fedora and openSUSE I used very briefly and can't comment on then other than the very nice gnome customization they offer. And CentOS I use on three servers, since it is the standardized linux distro at my company. Plus, I always remember someone's forum signature: "If you want to learn about some distro, use that distro. If you want to learn about linux, use Slackware". This citation is not mine, but kudos! for the owner.

I guess finding this thread on a day I'm wearing my Slackware polo is most auspicious!

My never ending thanks go to you because you are one from among four founders of that thread together with michaelslack, Woodsman, and my humble person.

To outbid you now someone should declare that he or she is born July 17, 2013. To outbid him or her someone else should declare that his or her real name is Slacky Slacko.

gtludwig,

To outbid you one should declare now that he or she wears Slackware T-shirt, pants, shoes, and baseball cap. To outbid him or her someone else should declare that he or she has a permanent Slackware tattoo on his or her back (at least 5×5 square inches of the surface area).

lets see, I started with a Commmodore 64 around the mid 80's, would have been somewhere in the 5th to 7th grade, I have odd eye problems and therefore eye hand coordination issues which makes writing slow and difficult so I started doing my school work with speedscript (kind of open source at the time, you typed in the code from a magazine). had my dual 1541 floppy drives, color monitor and commodore's high end color printer (MPS1200). Bought a SX64 and Amiga 500 around 91 or 92 then a 286-20Mhz (rare speed). Built my own custom case which housed my Amiga, C64 and 286PC, drives, movem, A64 adapter for the older commodore periherials, etc. moved up to a 386 and doc 6 and windows 3.1 then a 486 with windows 95 and installed Slackware 2 or 3 from the walnut creek cdrom.

I was able to compile a Kernel for my hardware and got it working and on the internet but didn't do much with it. Fast forward a little over 10 years I'm working as a BOFH for a contracting company and I bought a new laptop, Dell Latitude C400 with Windows XP. Couple malware infections which were easier to just reinstall than try to clean up later and I was dual booting Redhat and XP. I found redhat somewhat slow and annoying, tried a couple other distros under vmware player and finally went back to Slackware, I think it was version 9 or 10. Each time a new major version would relaese I would buy a larger drive and install fresh to it and copy my data back over. Skipped Slackware 11 I beleive it was which disabled tap to click on the touchpad and wouldn't let me turn it back on. Then around Slackware 12 I bought the netbook and have kept the same pattern of dropping a new drive for each major release and the previous drive becomes my backup. Slackware 14 now. Slackware just works, you just boot off the dvd, run through the menus, install everything and walk away for half an hour and come back to pretty much a completely working system. I've tried a lot of other distros but none stays as consistent and simple to setup and maintain (what very little is needed). Since I work in IT all day long the last thing I want to do is troubleshoot problems at home so I can just install slackware and forget about it.

My never ending thanks go to you because you are one from among four founders of that thread together with michaelslack, Woodsman, and my humble person.

To outbid you now someone should declare that he or she is born July 17, 2013. To outbid him or her someone else should declare that his or her real name is Slacky Slacko.

To outbid you one should declare now that he or she wears Slackware T-shirt, pants, shoes, and baseball cap. To outbid him or her someone else should declare that he or she has a permanent Slackware tattoo on his or her back (at least 5×5 square inches of the surface area).

Ah, shucks, thanks! Right now I'm planning on replacing Linux Mint on my ThinkPad T61, but I haven't decided what kind of Slackware setup I want on it yet: Xfce, KDE, or Openbox.

My Slackware t-shirt is getting a little rough, I think it's time to order a new one, those nice Mayan theme, Slackware 14 versions, along with perhaps a subscription and the book.

I just bought ThinkPad T61 and I am very glad of it. I even managed to accustom myself to use a wide screen. It requires the other habits than 4:3 screen but it is possible to use it in a reasonable way.

If you consider Xfce and Openbox give a chance to Window Maker as well and try it for a three days.

I started with LBA-Linux in the beginning of 2005. Several months later it got discontinued, so I used Fedora core for a while (3 and 4). Tried several more, among which was SUSE. One night, after I had done some reading about Slackware and had printed instructions about how to install and configure it, I decided to give it a try. And never looked back.

Back in 98 or 99 I was working at a local ISP doing account installs and tech support. I had also just begun learning Unix commands as we were using BSD on our servers. Adding users, FTP, mail and webspace for accounts and rebooting the machines was all the experience I had. 1 week our system administrator didn't come into work, so the owner of the shop comes by my desk and drops the giant 5 ring BSD binder manual on my desk and says "You've just been promoted."

So in my search to find something I could play with on another machine and at home so I could learn to manage our server without blowing them up I found Slackware. It was the first one I found that I could install myself without any problems. I was able to find all the documentation I needed to get everything working that I wanted (which wasn't much if I recall), and it just worked.

Since then I have had a mix of IT jobs mostly at Windows shops but I have always found a place for Slackware. I have always had a some sort of server at home that runs Slackware. It wasn't until Slackware64 that I really made the full jump to Linux only on my desktop. I now use Slackware full time as a web designer and part time IT consultant.

Like others I have tried other Distro's, but there is something so simplistic and pure about Slackware that will always make it my home.